Date: Tue, 23 Nov 1999 11:23:09 -0000
From: Ernie
Subject: Secrets Chapter 2
Secrets
by Ian DeShils
Chapter 2: The Disk
Teddy was late again and I'd been waiting and waiting. Then I heard a key
rattle in the lock so I hid behind the couch. When he yelled "I'm home" I
wanted to laugh, but then he'd know I was gonna get his ass, so I just put
my hand over my mouth and stayed quiet. I was gonna get him, just like I
used to when . . . when . . . well I can't remember when it was, but I
remember getting him. Only . . . it seemed like he used to have a football
or something, and maybe it was outside 'cause there was grass and
trees. . . But that didn't matter! I was gonna get his ass, and I wrapped
my arms around me to keep from laughing. This'll teach him to be so late! I
had to eat dinner with Mrs. Burrows, then she went home, and I've been
alone, waiting and waiting for Teddy, and now it's almost Shower Time!
"YOUR ASS IS MINE!" Jake roared.
A bug must feel the same surprise when a windshield bears down on it at
sixty miles an hour. All his 200 pounds landed squarely on my back knocking
the wind out of me.
"Jesus Christ, Jake, are you trying to kill me?" I gaspeed.
Stunned, I lay for a moment unable to move. I hadn't hit the floor that
hard since my days as a bouncer at the old Sidewinder club. Totally
unrepentant, Jake was too busy undressing me to even notice I had trouble
breathing.
"It's Shower Time, it's Shower Time" he chortled as he stripped my clothes
away.
As my kidneys crawled back to their original position it came to me that a
few hours exercize the gym each week just wasn't enough. I'll have to take
him to the mountains and let him climb rocks and chase deer, anything to
burn off all that pent up energy. Camping seems to calm him down and for a
few weeks afterwards I don't need to be on my guard every second. These
last couple of years have been a lot like living with a wild bull. I never
know when he's going to attack, or why. Today its 'Shower Time', last week,
because he'd wanted spaghetti instead of chicken. Jake isn't out to harm
me, he just doesn't know his own strength, and I'm getting too old to be
suddenly smashed to the floor and sat on, or worse, tickled, until I agree
to his whims.
When I took him out of the hospital I had hopes that bringing him back to
familiar surrounding might make him snap out of it and become his old self
again. So far that hasn't happened. Yet . . . Sometimes I can almost sense
my old friend and partner of twenty-five years, lurking just out of sight,
staring at me past those childish eyes.
Physically he's fine, even the brain damage was almost nil, but the trauma
of that incident forced a regression back to childhood that his doctors
think is permanent. They worked on him for more than a year and then told
me as kindly as they could that for the rest of his life Jake Sanders would
probably be little more than he is right now. Oh, there are flashes of my
old friend; 'You're ass is mine, Ted.' was the phrase he always used when
we horsed around, but the real Jake is gone; lost that awful night three
years ago when he stopped those bullets meant for someone else.
Jake only acts this way home, in public he's so reserved you'd never
guess. He seldom speaks and never calls attention to himself, but if
someone corners him and begins asking questions he can't answer, he'll
start to cry. That embarrasses everyone, Jake most of all. Luckily that
doesn't happen often. When we attend parties or private gatherings, our
friends will warn the other guests and usually he's left in peace.
What amazes Jake's doctors is his ability to read and write. They say that
shouldn't be possible, considering his regressed age, but he does, and
quite well. His writing is clear and simple, his reading comprehension well
above his apparent mental age and for some reason he retains things better
if he reads it than if it's told to him. It's been a hard trip for
Jake. After spending nearly two months in a coma, he awoke calling out for
his first wife, whom he hasn't seen in twenty-some years. Now he doesn't
remember her at all. Me, he recognized instantly and he even seemed to know
Annie and the kids, but with no sure knowledge of their relationship. He
still can't put that together. When the kids call him 'Papa' he thinks it's
all a game. What he can't remember at all is what happened to him that
night nor the things we've experienced together over the past 24
years. When I mention the old days, he wants me to write it all down. I
promised him I would when I had the time, and that may be soon now. GSI is
in the process of being sold and it looks like none of us will have to
worry about money for the rest of our lives.
Nearly twenty years ago it put us deeply in hock to open one little office
in LA. Now we have sixty-seven in major cities from coast to coast and our
lawyer says GSI is worth millions. We worked hard and we were lucky, but
Jake made us rich when he dragged us out of private eye work and into
security services. We still do background checks and such, but GSI now
exists primarily to guard people and property. That's where the money is,
and strangely enough, it's pretty much the same work we did back when we
first met. . .
Soon now, Jake, I'll have the time to write down all the things we did, and
I will. I promise you, old friend, I will.
We're going on vacation tomorrow! Teddy likes to tease. He said we were
going to Korea and China and places like that, but when I said we should go
to the mountains, he laughed and showed me the map he was hiding behind his
back. Teddy's so much fun! We looked at the map and I showed him what roads
to go on. He always lets me do that. I thought of a place that's awful
nice, so I marked it on the map, and then he said we'd best get packed,
'cause we're leaving early in the morning, and I'm so excited I can hardly
stand it!
Bascomb and Mead finished the transfer in record time. I'm pleased and at
the same time saddened to leave our life's work behind, but without Jake
involved it's just no fun anymore. Besides, Stan Mead is right. Offers
like this come along only once in a lifetime.
Fall was winding down toward winter and in southern California that meant
rain. We saw it come down hard and steady on the day we left for
Colorado. Jake loves Colorado. Before he was hurt he more or less directed
everything we did there. If we so much as wrote a contract for security
services anywhere in that state, Jake would insist he personally had to
inspect and approve the site. Even a simple background check was all the
excuse he needed to pack up and take off for a few days. I once told him I
thought he had a lover squirreled away in Colorado, and he said he did, and
then made me take some time off so he could introduce us.
His new romance turned out to be the Rocky Mountains. It is gorgeous there,
but I still prefer summer hiking to mushing up some mountain side through
four feet of snow. I enjoyed skiing as much as Jake, but I also liked the
lodges with their roaring fires, the hot rum toddies and the great food
that goes along with it. Jake wanted to explore out of the way places where
tourists never went. We used to add an extra week to our ski trips just to
satisfy his curiosity about where some road led, or maybe to make an
impromptu visit to a corner of the state we had never seen before.
Not all of Colorado is as beautiful as the Rockies, but Jake had an eye for
detail that made those trips interesting. Somehow he dug up little snippets
of history about every place we went and regaled me with them as we
traveled. Back then I thought he might be gathering material for a book,
but he never wrote anything down that I know of.
Jake always picked our routes when we vacationed together, and this time
was no different. We drove the last piece of GSI we owned, a four wheel
drive Bronco that Jake bought ten years ago and had lovingly maintained. It
still had the logo on the doors, Jake's cameras still nestled in their
custom built bins. I hadn't changed a thing since he last drove it.
We crossed miles of cool and sullen desert laid bare beneath an
overcast. This day no blinding sun or shimmering heat to help disguise the
cruel disfigurements of man. I once fell in love with the Mojave's
untrammeled beauty, but that was twenty-five years ago when the abuse was
far less evident. The desert has suffered since, but the road is better,
and still broken only by the occasional oasis that offered hearty trucker's
meals and overpriced gasoline. We stopped for lunch, after which Jake
promptly got his fill of Joshua trees and fell asleep. Little did I know he
was saving all his energy for Las Vegas.
When we reached Glitter City, Jake began displaying the genius of his
condition. He has the wide eyed appreciation for life only a child can show
and it's wedded to a body with strength and endurance of a rhino. We did
the town. Our overnight stay extended to nearly a week as we visited every
casino on the strip. We stayed in a different hotel each night because Jake
wanted to sleep inside a castle or a pyramid or some other such wonderful
delight, yet the truth is we hardly slept at all. We played the slots. I,
cautiously, he with wild abandon, stuffing dollar after dollar into them
after he discovered they ate more than one coin at a time. We dined, we
strolled, we saw the shows and Jake was dazzled. Finally, we rode the rides
at Circus Circus until sick and tired of it. (I was sick, Jake was only
tired), and at last completely sated, we made our escape heading north
again.
In Utah the land changed rapidly from high plains to higher rugged rock as
we made our to the top of the San Rafael Reef. A brief halt at the summit
for a pit stop, a hurried glance at the vista and the icy wind drove us
down toward Green River for a night of quiet restfulness.
Thankfully, nothing glitters in Green River except the running lights of
semi's. We found a restaurant advertising home cooked meals and Jake, now
wound down to normal speed, ate heartily. It has become our mode for him to
leave the tip, which he did, a most generous one gleaned from his Vegas
winnings. He actually did quite well in Vegas, coming away with slightly
more than he poked into those machines. His pockets bulged, he jingled from
a mother lode of tip money, happy in the fact that a stack of silver
dollars is much more substantial looking than the paper kind.
At the register he saw a canister set up to take donations for a local
child's medical expense and carefully read the plea. The cashier blinking
in amazement as Jake unloaded, filling the can to overflowing, then asked
if I had some to give. It was so typically Jake, so expressive of his
unselfish nature, it floored me for a moment. All else may have changed,
but in this, he was still his old self!
In the morning we headed north to the little town of Wellington. From
there, Jake had marked a line up through Nine Mile Canyon which led to US
40 east of Duchesne. We were up that canyon once before, years ago, and had
marveled at the petroglyphs etched on the sandstone cliffs along the
winding road. Nothing much had changed. Nine Mile Canyon was still one of
the best kept secrets of Utah, a state more widely known for its secrets of
another kind.
We stayed on US 40 into Colorado until almost reaching Craig, then, still
following Jake's map, we turned south on state road 13 for a few
miles. From there, Jake insisted we take a side road that looked like it
went nowhere, but sported a little sign and an arrow pointing to someplace
called Soledad. A gray, overcast sky had been spitting snowflakes for the
last hour, but I humored him. What the hell, the rental at Vail was paid in
advance, we had no particular schedule to meet and all the time in the
world to get there. Besides, Jake did seem to know where we were
going. Perhaps some bit of old memory was at work here and the town of
Soledad might just crystallize it.
We put several long winding miles of rough country road behind before
coming to an even narrower trail angling away up the mountain and again
Jake indicated we take that path. The two track went on for miles, over a
low pass, down into a pretty valley and then rose again past a long line of
corrals that marched up the mountainside. I turned passed a few out
buildings and suddenly I found the road blocked by a house. It finally came
to me that this was no mountain town. We had driven up to someone's door
yard!
Before I could say anything, Jake was out of the truck looking around in
confusion. He turned to stare at the corrals, then spun around again and I
saw his face clear. "New house!" He said, and while that fairly obvious
observation might hold some meaning for him, it left me completely in the
dark. Was this where he meant to go or had he merely gotten us lost? He
quite often shifts to play acting if he makes a blunder.
Two men stood on the porch watching us and as I walked over to apologize
for the intrusion, the older man began to laugh,
"Say, I'm positive I sent you guys a check. What happened, did it bounce?"
Then I recognized him. We had met several years before at our La Brea
office, his name was Hammond or Harris, or something that started with an H
and suddenly things fell into place.
Some months before the shooting, Jake had gone to Colorado to do a
background check on the man who owned Rancho Soledad. He had been here
before! I remembered how impressed Jake ha been with the little ramshackle
ranch house at Soledad filled with thousands of dollars worth of antiques
and collectibles. Jake had found no one home, but the house was open; the
door totally devoid of locks. He spent an entire afternoon waiting in vain
for someone to show up and was so fascinated with the place that he talked
about it for weeks afterwards.
It look to me as though the owners had come into some money because this
new two story structure was nothing at all like the shack Jake described.
The younger man, who turned out to be Harris' son, talked to Jake for a few
minutes, then ask us in. I can't describe the feeling that house gave
me. It was warmly comfortable, eminently livable, a home in every sense of
the word, and somehow it brought back memories of long ago and of a little
house on the California desert that for me once held that same aura.
Jake began wandering about looking at small treasures that sat on shelves
along the walls. Picking up an object, he would hold it tightly in his
hands as though gaining some intimate knowledge of the thing by merely
clutching it, then with great care, set it down again. I was nervous he
might break something, but the Harris' seemed unperturbed. The younger man
just smiled at Jake's avid curiosity and told me those things were meant to
be handled.
We spent the most pleasant afternoon I could recall with Jake exploring,
and the Harris' telling me the history of the ranch. As the day faded, our
hosts invited us to supper, then later, to spend the night. It was probably
for the best. I doubt Jake would have left without an argument. He was
completely mesmerized by all he saw.
Lonnie helped carry our luggage to a big upstairs room that held a huge
double bed.
"This is what Dad calls the Antique suite," He said, explaining that
everything in the room was original to the ranch and some of it more than
two hundred years old. Then with a little grin he added,
"Everything but the mattress that is. Luckily, it's somewhat newer. I'm
sure you'll be comfortable. Oh, by the way, at this time of the year, there
is no formal breakfast hour. Sleep as late as you want, then just rustle up
something for yourselves. Dad is usually up fairly early, but I sometimes
lay around 'till 10:00."
The next morning Jake was up with the sun. I found him in the kitchen
having coffee with Dan Harris. As soon as I walked in, Jake jumped up all
excited,
"Teddy, Dan said there's a cave here. Can we go see it?" He begged.
"I guess, if it's OK with Dan and if it's not to far away."
Smiling, Dan repied,
"Well, it's pretty darn close, in fact it's right here."
Dan opened a door off the kitchen. He lit a lantern and led the way into
the neatest, cleanest cave I've ever seen. The floor was level cut stone
for about twenty feet, then steps led upward to a higher terrace with
another terrace beyond that. Dan lit several more lanterns so we could get
a better look at the cave, and then directed us up the steps. By the time
we climbed to the last terrace, we were higher than the house itself and
there Dan showed us the spring that provided water for the ranch. It
sparkled!
"Pretty neat isn't it? This little spring was stoned up over two hundred
years ago. That pipe there, feeds the house, the overflow goes to the
corrals."
I couldn't get over how the water sparkled. It practically fizzed.
"What causes the bubbles?" I asked.
"Just oxygen in the water reacting with some harmless gasses. Actually it's
extremely pure. It's the finest drinking water I've ever tasted."
Off the terraces were several side chambers which Dan said were all dead
ends. He took us down one such side tunnel to show us an area filled with
wonderful cave paintings and all of them perfectly preserved. I commented
on their condition and he nodded.
"Yes, it's remarkable considering how many people have live in this cave
over the years. Back when this ranch was a Spanish land grant there was a
large hacienda not far from where the corrals stand now. It burned in the
1850's and so the owner moved into the cave and lived here for years, in
fact, I understand the cave was actually winter quarters for all who spent
that season here. Lot's of history in these stones. Isn't it nice that even
the earliest settlers respected what they found?" He patting the wall
affectionately.
Down below the door opened and Lonny Harris called out, "Breakfast anyone?"
Later, Lonnie gave us a tour of the corrals, the shearing sheds, loading
docks and storage buildings. The ranch was far more extensive than I
thought, yet there were no animals in evidence, not even a dog.
"It's a lot different in the summer," Lonnie explained, "The sheep are all
down on the winter range now. We run them here only from May through
September."
"No horses?" Jake asked.
"Nope, not in the winter. We keep close to a dozen here in the summer, but
they're over near Craig right now. The snow gets so deep up here that
horses would have to be barned all winter."
Jake was a little disappointed at the lack of animals until Lonnie pointed
down the mountain side toward a meadow at the bottom of the slope. A herd
of majestic elk grazed near a creek, their breath fogging the cold mountain
air.
"Lot's of wildlife, 'course grazers move down when the snow gets deep, but
even in the dead of winter there's always animals working the
stream. Beaver and Otters. It's real pretty here in the wintertime."
Lost in thought he stood looking down toward the little valley. It was easy
to see this spot held many memories for Lonny, perhaps some bittersweet
ones as well. He stood there for the longest while, then finally smiled at
Jake and said,
"We do have one year around pet. His name is Oscar."
He led us a barn where a huge owl dozed in the rafters.
"Well, he's sort of a pet, only don't try to touch him. You might say he
rules the roost in here."
Lonnie whistled and the owl blinked sleepily in our direction.
"That's about as friendly as he gets," Lonnie chuckled, "He's a good mouser
though, better than any cat."
Jake fell in love with the ranch. At first he kept going from building to
building, just looking at everything, but soon he was helping Lonnie with
the fall chores. He especially liked soaping the saddles and then buffing
them to a high luster. He also enjoyed helping Dan with the carpentry work
he was doing to tighten up the buildings against the coming winter. It was
the kind of things Jake could do without frustration and both Dan and
Lonnie were lavishwith their praise.
Dan ask me what had happened to Jake. I told him of the shooting and Jake's
near brush with death.
"I knew it must have been something pretty bad. I talked to him when your
outfit did that work for me a few years ago. I thought then he was one of
the sharpest guys I ever met. It's a real shame."
Dan never mentioned Jake's condition again nor did he ever treat him like a
child. I took a warm liking for the man and his sensitivities.
I'm not sure how it happened. As I think back I can't recall even talking
about a swap, but a few days later, the Harris's were leaving in Jake's
Bronco with a letter of introduction to our building manager, and we were
staying for the winter! Lonnie said Jake needed the peace and quiet Soledad
provided, then they bid us Goodbye and drove away. And it all seemed
perfectly normal.
If we decide not to stay, there are some trucks parked in the sheds. They
left a jeep, two pickups and what looks like an old army transport, all
canvassed over for the winter and all in good running order. We can leave
anytime before the snow sets in, but somehow I don't think we will. Jake
loves this place. Each morning at dawn he's out hiking the hills, coming
back for breakfast chilled to the bone and happier than I've seen him at
anytime these last two years.
The house is fantastic. One entire room is devoted to a library with more
variety than I could have imagined. Among the histories, geography's,
novels, biography's, travel folders, magazines, 'how to' books and volumes
of poetry, are sets of journals written by former owners and residents of
Soledad. There is an entire shelf of these journals, some written in
longhand, others carefully printed out in block letters. The paper was
anything that came to hand from ruled notebook to fine vellum, but each one
is bound in a heavy cover that protects it during handling. Some of the
earliest ones were written in Spanish and I believe at least half the
entire collection are copies of long disintegrated originals. On the inside
cover of those folders that contain copies is stamped THE RS TRUST and the
paper used is new and acid free. Evidently, the R S Trust whatever it is,
cares a great deal about the lives and times of the inhabitants of this
house. The copies are beautifully done. In some of the later folders only a
few pages had been replaced, yet every attempt was made to duplicate the
look of the original sheets right down to the exact color and size. It gave
me pause that anyone would take such care with the writings of ordinary
folks and suddenly I had an itch to begin a journal of my own. This winter
will be the perfect time to set down all the things Jake wants to know.
I selected two folders; one written by Lonnie Harris, the other by his
father, Dan, and set them aside for later reading. I then found an unused
tablet and started making notes of my own, trying hard to remember the
chronology of events of the last twenty four years. I was just getting into
it, when Jake came bursting through the door.
"It's snowing out, it's really snowing hard! Come see, come see!" He
cried, jumping up and down with delight. He yanked me away from the desk
and it was several snowball fights later before I got back to it again.
The house has no real electricity. For light we use oil lamps and an LP gas
fixture in the kitchen, but there is a small wind generator capable of
keeping several 12 volt car batteries charged. This set up is likely a
ranch necessity since Soledad is miles from the nearest phone or service
garage, however, the Harris' took full advantage of this tiny power source
by cleverly installing a high quality FM car radio and CD player in a
snazzy looking component enclosure. In the spot normally taken up by a
television set is a shelved area that holds board games, cards and puzzles
and thus this cabinet becomes more truly an entertainment center than the
one we left behind in Brentwood.
Upstairs is a large and beautifully appointed bathroom, modern in every way
and with a seemingly endless supply of hot water. The kitchen looked small
and rustic until I found how convenient it is. Supplies of canned and dried
foodstuffs, enough to feed an army, is stored in a pantry larger than the
kitchen itself and connected to it by a sliding door. There is also a root
cellar in a cave behind the house that holds a variety of fresh
vegetables. We definitely won't starve.
There seems to be plenty of fuel, there are two huge LP gas tanks in the
yard. We cook with gas, cool our food with it too and it supplies the
instant water heater that never lets us down, but while we've searched
everywhere, we have never found the furnace. It obviously works OK, the
house is always comfortably warm, I just can't locate it. We do our laundry
more or less by hand in an old wringer washer powered by a gasoline engine
and the clothes are hung outside to freeze dry. It really isn't all that
much trouble for just the two of us. Jake and I make a game of it. He
always want's to help with whatever I'm doing and hanging clothes gives him
a feeling of accomplishment.
Now that the snow is deep, we stay indoors much of the time, even our
laundry is hung in the cave to dry. Dan Harris said there is absolutely no
danger there, so I let Jake go exploring while I get psyched up to start
writing. Unlike the other journals, mine will be typed, luckily. No one,
including myself can read my handwritten scribble. It was only habit that
caused me to bring along my little portable office, which is really nothing
more than a small laptop computer and a portable printer stuffed into a
briefcase, yet with these singularly important items, Jake and I have at
times, conducted the entire business affairs of GSI. Now they will be put
to a more mundane use; reconstructing for Jake the happenings of the last
two decades. It was a simple matter to tap into the ranch's 12 volt system
to recharge the spare battery packs, but paper was something else again
until I found that anything that fits the platen works just fine in those
little ink jets.
So far I haven't written a thing to tweak Jake's interest, all I've done is
make a diary of current events and that is not what he wants. The truth is
I'm nervous about starting. Jake is so happy here, he hasn't had a single
nightmare since we arrived. What if reading about his former life brings
them back again? On the other hand he keeps asking and I can't put him off
forever.
As another form of procrastination, I've decided to look at what the
Harris' wrote before buckling down to it myself. Perhaps reading of other
peoples trials and tribulations will give me the incentive to start,
although as ranchers, it's doubtful those two quiet men ever experienced
the kind problems Jake has seen. . .
#####
Five days after I wrote that thoughtless statement, I once again sit before
the keyboard, completely stunned by my own shallowness. What bigotry of
mind led me to assume that Jake was the only resident of this quiet house
ever to have met disaster? I cannot shed the images of suffering described
in those accounts, nor the feeling that despite the differences in time and
space, we have crossed paths with the Harris' many times before. Jake must
read this, he must! It may prove to be the best starting place for his own
life story. I'll type excerpts from both journals, blending them into a
line of reference points he can follow. Chapters might work best for him or
perhaps a sequence of short stories, but whatever I decide, I'm convinced
this must be rendered before dealing with our own history. If Jake can see
the interconnections as I do, then perhaps this will help open the past for
him.
The place to start has to be with Dan's journal and the best beginning of
all comes near the end of it. God, I hope I'm approaching this in the right
way. If all it does is upset Jake's current happy mood, I'll not soon
forgive myself. . .